Table Manners
by aohatsu
Summary: james and sirius; james thinks about the differences between sirius and padfoot.


**table manners**  
james and sirius of _harry potter__  
james thinks about the differences between sirius and padfoot._

Everyone, James thinks, eats dinner in the same bloody manner as everybody else. Same time, same place--unless someone who attended Hogwarts was rather cunning and seduced the house-elves into feeding them at midnight. Even then, however, the house-elves would kick you out if you came around too often. (It had happened to him back in second year, when he'd been avoiding Padfoot for a week when a rather great prank went rather wrong. James still argues that Padfoot had looked quite dashing with all that hair growing where it ought not grow.)

James has been watching his best mates for a while now, though. No, that is not creepy, because he's James. If it was Snivellus watching them, all hell would break loose, James felt certain. (He'd probably be the one to start it. Actually, that was a good idea for a prank. Weird Muggle notions of dead blokes coming back to life and everything.) Anyway, the point is that he's noticing a few differences between how his fellow marauders actually shove food into their mouths at dinner.

Wormtail, for instance, does basically that. The shoving food into his mouth bit. More often than not whatever he's eating dribbles down his chin, and he wipes it off with the sleeve of his robe (not that he gets it all and sometimes just adds more) and repeats the entire procedure over and over until he's finally full. (And then dessert comes, and James just isn't getting into that, so don't even ask.)

Moony, James thinks, has to be the most polite dinner guest he's ever met. Not that he's a guest, but he'd be a damn good one if he ever managed to come to James' house for Christmas, which James is still pressuring him about. (He thinks the boy is nearly annoyed enough to just say hell with it. Funny, how James always gets what he wants if he tries hard enough. It's a matter of skill.) He uses his fork, always, and no matter how runny the eggs are in the morning, Moony never gets any ugly yellow stains on his robes. (Unless he just spells them clean really quickly, and he's never been caught.) He never even has to brush his robes off after standing up--crumbs don't exist around Moony. James really wants to know how he does that. He thinks it would help him out on days where he manages to sit next to Lily at dinner.

Once in a while, though, James notices little things with Moony and food. He'll do something, like forgetting to swallow before shouting something, or he'll lean so far onto the table that his robe brushes against whatever is on his plate and ends up soaked in syrup. He actually apologizes after he does something like that. James isn't quite sure why, because no one cares. He actually thinks Moony might be apologizing to himself, and even though that's insane, werewolves can't claim to be sane anyway. (At least, Moony can't. He needs to choose better company if he wants to do that.)

Padfoot, though, is probably the most interesting. He's so casual, it's hard to notice that everything he does is utterly calculated. Everything he does is planned out. James knows, because he's slipped up a few times too. (That in itself wouldn't be a big deal, except then he scrambles to attention and does something to make sure no one notices he messed up.)

It's remarkable how Padfoot can sit how he sits without something there to prop him up, but he manages it. (While still looking good--how does he do that?) He'll take up four seats by himself, just so that he can stretch his legs across them all. He eats quickly, brushing any crumbs left on his mouth away with his hand and then onto his pants beneath his robes. He'll lean back sometimes, enough that people behind him need to ask him to stop. (The girls, specifically, because Padfoot has made more than one comment in the past about how girls liked to wear disturbingly strange panties just because they thought no one would see them. How wrong they were, really. Sirius had made a comment about Lily's undergarments one time and had a resulting bruise on the side of his face for a week afterwards, James remembers, smugly.)

Padfoot isn't shy about discussing homework and pranks and Moony's furry little problem with toast still moving around in his mouth. James, Moony and Wormtail have all thrown things at him on different occasions just to get him to shut up and swallow. (It's actually near-worse than Peter's eating habits, if just because he does it on purpose.) He talks loudly enough, sometimes, that Dumbledore actually speaks to him above everybody else, saying "quiet down" in that weird way that made even the Slytherins do what he said without complaining.

He's careful, Padfoot. He really is.

But he slips up.

James noticed him doing it. Padfoot's feet had been planted firmly on the ground, his back was straight as a board. (James thought it was kind of scary, at the time. He had been under the impression that Padfoot had a back issue and he couldn't help but slouch all of the time. Or he was just lazy, which was much more likely, but didn't explain why he always got away with it.) He was polite, just for a minute, even more than Moony, and how was that possible? but it didn't last long. His little moment of 'Pass the salt, please, James?' lasted just that--a moment that was maybe less than a second.

James saw Padfoot notice what he was doing; the widening of his eyes and the instant change in his posture. James saw him slouch so quickly it looked like he'd actually swallowed a shrinking potion, before suddenly the bloke's pumpkin juice was on Wormtail and he was laughing with that bark of his that was just a little too loud, a little too quick, a little too… much, just for spilt pumpkin juice.

James started to notice then, how Padfoot pretends that his family never managed to drill things like how to eat properly into him. James is pretty sure that Padfoot loves to think (and make sure everyone else thinks it too) that he managed to shake off everything his charming old mum had slapped into him as a child.

It made since, sort of. Padfoot hates his parents, hates his brother, hates his house-elf, hates his home back in London. So, James decides not to mention it. He decides not to bring it to anyone's attention when Padfoot forgets to pretend, just for a second that might be a moment.

But he still watches the other three, and it's only in the common room one night, when they're all trying to think of the best way to cheat on their N.E.W.T's, and Moony says, "James, did you know that when you eat, you always stare at Sirius?" that James starts to think maybe he's not the only one who notices that Padfoot isn't quite as carefree as everyone seems to think.

James knows though, that the real Padfoot is the one that slouches and chews with his mouth open and blows up a bag of chips in Lily's microwave (even James doesn't touch that, so Padfoot really should have known better than to play with Muggle things that have to do with cooking) and wears his muddy boots in James' living room.

The Padfoot that sits up straight and cleans his shoes with a spell before walking on the carpet is just some kid living in Grimmauld Place that Padfoot tries desperately to forget he knows. James, and Moony, and maybe even Wormtail, manage to convince him that they don't know who that kid is, because Padfoot--

Padfoot is the crazy mutt that runs around in the rain and shakes his fur so that everyone gets so covered in mud that they just have to laugh, and Padfoot is Padfoot and there's nothing else to it except fur and paws and a tail that never stops moving.

**end**


End file.
